1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a core slider mounting apparatus and to a core slider mounting method for mounting a core slider onto a work piece such as a suspension (hereinafter referred to as a "gimbles") which constitutes a head of a hard disk drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
A robot mounter is a conventionally known apparatus for mounting a core slider of a hard disk drive onto gimbals. The robot mounter fixes the gimbals, which a work, and which have an adhering portion, to a jig disk, and after a dispenser applies an adhesive to the adhering portion of the gimbals, the robot mounter causes chucks on a robot head to vacuum attach and move a core slider from a core slider container.
The core slider is first mounted on a positioning unit to make positioning adjustments, and thereafter vacuum attached by the chucks on the robot head again, and then moved to the adhering portion of the gimbals to which the adhesive has been completely applied, and brought into contact with the adhering portion as vacuum sucked. Then, a spot radiating section radiates UV rays to tentatively cure the adhesive on the adhering portion of the gimbals. Such a robot mounter is of a space-saving cell type.
The that described robot mounter such as above is a semi-automated machine in the sense that a cell-type machine and operator work are performed in cooperation. That is, the operation of fixing the gimbals to the jig disk is performed by an operator through a rotary table for safety purposes, and this face-to-face operation is a completely manual-based operation. Thus, the operation with the robot mounter does involve the presence of an operator inside the clean room
Further, the operation of fixing the gimbals to the jig disk, which is a manually performed operation, requires a certain degree of skill to achieve a desired fixing accuracy.
Further, the operation of fixing the gimbals to the jig disk, which is a manually performed operaion, requires a certain degree of skill to achieve a desire fixing accuracy.
Still further, a predetermined number of steps are involved to maintain the jig disk and the like since their required accuracies are on the order of microns.
Still further, although simple in its design, the robot mounter is not well suited for mass production.
Still further, although the respective processing steps are basically performed continuously, the curing step has to be performed on a separate unit. Thus, there is a limit in improving the cycle time.